Anne Baxter plays a young woman who receives a "Dear John" letter from her boyfriend who is off fighting in Korea. Bitterly upset, she decides to take sleazy photographer Raymond Burr up on his offer of a date. He gets her drunk, takes her home, and tries to rape her. She wakes up the next morning next to his dead body, not remembering most of the night. She heads home and tries to act innocent, but that is impossible, because she is a seething ball of nerves whose very appearance basically screams "I did it, whatever it was!!!"

Meanwhile, ace reporter Richard Conte takes up the case, dubbing her the Blue Gardenia Killer after a flower that was left behind at the murder scene. Conte makes a front-page offer to the killer: come and give me your story, and my paper will help with your defense. Baxter, who is on the verge of a breakdown and close to being discovered by the police, decides to trust him, not knowing whether he is honest or if he merely wants a big story.

The film was probably groundbreaking in its day, since it is among the few film noirs from the classic period that featured a female lead. I guess, in this case, Richard Conte is the femme fatale. However, there are a few things about it that make it an average film at best. First of all is that it has dated badly. Present-day viewers will have a hard time relating to the situation, most obviously as it relates to the press. Secondly, and most importantly, the ending is obviously something that was added against the will of director Fritz Lang. Compare this film to his masterful Scarlet Street, where the protagonist spends the rest of his life haunted by the ghosts of his "victims." This film's syrupy ending, complete with a deus ex machina confession by the real killer, is just not Lang's style. It turned what might have been a bitter and memorable ending into something common. Rent it as an example of a film noir that strayed from the formula, not as a really great film.